


The Merrow and the Rope Maker

by Oceans_Away



Category: Regency Femdom Week - Fandom
Genre: Bondage, Comfort, F/M, Femdom, First time kinksters, Folklore, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Getting Together, Imagine if anyone in Poldark knew what the clitoris was, Jealousy, Light Dom/sub, Ownership, Party, Regency, Sea, soft domme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:28:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27165910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oceans_Away/pseuds/Oceans_Away
Summary: "Say you belong to me again."As fisher folk celebrate the last catch of the season, Cassandra, the rope maker, watches her old friend, Jacob, dance with another woman. Prickling with jealousy, she decides to claim him as her own. But more unfolds between them than she ever expected.This piece draws on Thomas Keightley's story,The Soul Cages, published, I have to admit, a very little bit after the Regency period. It's about a fisherman who makes friends with a merrow (a sort of merman) and subtly releases the souls he keeps in cages, as they drink together. When the merrow realises what the fisherman is doing, he vanishes.Written forRegency Femdom Week 2020. It's a pretty light version of the dynamic, but hey I was feeling soft.
Kudos: 20
Collections: Regency Femdom Week 2020





	The Merrow and the Rope Maker

Fire and water. 

Flames leaped and flailed from where they were tethered to a crackling heap of driftwood, broken pieces of wrecked boats, and frayed rope. The scents of burning wood and tar hissed into the salt and ale air. The roar of flame tangled with the crash of waves, as herds of dark water stampeded towards the stretch of brass beach and dashed upon the sand. It sprayed icy kisses over the flushed faces of the fisher folk dancing and drinking under the moon. It was a bracing October night and the last catch of the season had been hauled in, salted and barrelled. It was the final gasp before the long winter and the yearly battle against ruin. The village gathered around the defiance of the bonfire and threw themselves between the swell of the sea and the snap of flame, dancing with abandon on the edge of defeat.

Jacob flung himself in the dance. The brazen beat of the drum kicking up his heels and the wild whip of the fiddle spinning his body. He wove in and out of the other drunkards, the hoots of celebration and the clap of hands shattering against his skin. He found Charlotte’s hand and they knotted together and whirled apart again. Her eyes shone with glee.

Cassandra banged the drum and glared.

“What in blazes is he doing with her? The little harlot,” she grumbled, ramming her palms onto the taut skin and feeling the tremors shock up her arm.

“While I admit that Charlotte The Harlot is worthy of the stage,” Sarah said blithely, sawing at the fiddle and speaking with a closed mouth to keep her chin pinning it to her shoulder, “It is beneath you.”

“I mean him!” Cassandra cast her hand at Jacob mid-strike. “I haven’t seen such flirting since that acursed poet wandered through!”

Sarah eyed her friend sidelong. “Except for how Jacob flirts with you, all the time, every day, without reprieve.” 

Cassandra flicked her sharp eyes down and drove a wave of indignation into a roll on the drum. “He does not.” 

Sarah did not dignify that with a response, she just screeched the fiddle, making Cassandra wince. Cassandra let her eyes creep back up to Jacob, laughing and gambolling like a man possessed. He was just around the edge of the bonfire. The raging heat rippled the air and gave him the look of being underwater. She felt as if she was looking into the sea, spying a merrow splashing about in a swirl of selkies. Merrows kept souls in cages, and so did Jacob. He was handsome and happy and impulsive. In a village hewn from chalk and slate, harrowed by storms, sometimes appearing little more than the carrion left by smugglers, Jacob was the sanguine spirit of whom it was all too easy to fall into the clutches. They had been friends since childhood, real friends, close, deeply close. In the chaotic merriment of the party, a strange cold stole over Cassandra. She saw him through a veil, barred from her; under the sea while she was on the shore; among the fair folk, while she was tragically mortal. It almost frightened her. A lash of anger coursed from her gut and burnt it up. She hammered the drum faster. 

Sarah jumped and skipped her bow over the fiddle to keep up. She flashed Cassandra a level look. “Green is not an attractive colour on you.”

Cassandra kept her eyes on the fire. “Then what is?”

Sarah grinned, the flames painting them both in sloshing sunset. “Red. You are not one to sulk. You are a creature of passion. Show him that. Punish him with it, if you're so angry.”

Cassandra glanced at Sarah, an eyebrow raised in interest. Sarah’s face was impish, goading her. Cassandra felt the peculiar cold dissipate. She looked back to her merrow. Jacob cantered up to Charlotte and they clapped their hands with a harsh pistol sound. Cassandra’s jaw set. She punched the final beats of the song into the drum. Sarah’s fiddle wailed and the band let loose a bark of triumph, as the dance ended. The villagers applauded. Couples broke and reformed, some stumbling away for replenishment, some partnering up for more dancing, churning the sand with their bustling about. Raucous laughter and jeering and the glugging of beer tumbled around Cassandra, as she watched Jacob vanish into the shadows behind the fire. 

She shot out her hand and grabbed a passer by. Old Jim nearly toppled over on his single leg.

“Lass!” he rasped, “What’s th’ doing?”

Cassandra stood and steadied him, then pointed at her drum lodged in the sand. “Play this for me.”

Jim squinted under the brim of his battered hat. “Why?”

“So I can piss.”

“Your mother will hear of your bad language!”

“I should think so, I say it out loud. Will you take my place?”

Jim snorted. “I don’t know how to play.”

“Hear the sea?” Cassandra asked.

Jim nodded, confused.

“Just keep up the same rhythm.”

Jim was about to protest, but Cassandra strode around him and off down the beach. The old man leaned on his crutch, cocked his head, sighed in resignation, and manoeuvred himself down to the crate she had been sitting on. Sarah greeted him with amusement, eying her friend rocket away in a flare of flame.

Cassandra tore through the party, like a hound after a fox. Sand flurried up her patched skirts, as she pulled her feet roughly from its slowing grasp. The firelight hurtled over the villagers, forging them all into a bubbling, fused lump of molten tin, obscuring their faces and shadowing shapes. Her pulse raced, as she found neither Jacob, nor Charlotte. She called on her skills as a rope maker. Her long, nimble fingers were practiced in gathering straying, tangled threads and weaving them together, strong and single-minded. Rope had led Theseus through the labyrinth and kept Odysseus from the sirens, it anchored ships, it tamed wild horses. Rope makers did not let themselves get lost or fray apart. She took a deep breath of the charred air and flexed her fingers. She saw each bemusing shadow as a twizzling thread. She moved along the weave. The madness slowed around her.  _ There.  _ Her heart jarred to a halt, as she spotted Jacob’s narrow back by a stack of kegs of ale. His dusty, green coat swept with the rush of people close to him, hurrying past or dancing to music not yet begun. His black hair, bundled on the back of his head, was coming loose and tousling around the nape of his neck, as if swirling in water. He leaned back and the glint of pewter appeared, as he took a deep swig of beer. 

Cassandra grit her teeth, squared her shoulders, and marched herself forward.

Jacob yelped, as he was seized by the back of the collar and dragged away from the crowd. His ears flushed, he dropped his tankard, tripping backwards and staggering along with the hard tug on his coat. He wriggled like a caught cod. When he managed to wrench himself free and wheel around, he was several paces from the gathering. The firelight washed away, just a flicker in the corner of his eye. He blinked in the darkness. She melted into view in a sigh of moonlight. Tall and proud, her dark, copper hair escaping its bonds and shining like oil in the glow, her face chiselled, her eyes stray sparks from the fire, her mouth the soft shape of a sage leaf but pressed hard, her shoulders strong, and her fists on her hips, Cassandra glared at him through the dimness.

“Cassie?” he hiccupped merrily. Cassandra’s nostrils flared. His heart thumped. “Hello!” he continued, “Sard, it's good to see you! I thought you'd been sealed to that drum with wax. How are you enjoying the - OW!”

Cassandra had prodded him in the stomach.

“Why did you do that?” he demanded.

Cassandra looked into his face, tinged autumnal colours, as if the alcohol had been slapping his cheeks, like a nursemaid. She jutted her hip out further, his oblivious expression needling her. “Good to see me?” she snarled, “Good to see me? I have been at the party all evening, Jake, and your eye hasn't flitted my way once!”

Jacob frowned, his thick brows knotting over his pale, blue-green eyes. “You were playing the drum.”

Cassandra clucked her tongue. “The invisible drum?”

“No, but…”

Cassandra cut him off sharply. He almost felt her snip the end of his tongue. “What are you doing with Charlotte Clipper?” 

Jacob looked baffled. “With Charlotte? Nothing.”

Cassandra felt hot lime pour down her spine at the flat, naïve denial. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but it certainly wasn’t for him to act nonplussed. She huffed with the sound of steam shooting from a kettle, turned on her heel, and stomped up the beach. The sand was silver under the moonlight. Away from the eddying bonfire, the stars bloomed into view, a lacework of sparkling sea spray in the black. She looked up to them resolutely, trying to douse the pricking in her eyes. The picture of Charlotte’s adoring, angelic glance flooded her mind. She almost broke into a run. She felt such a fool. She wished she’d just kept pummelling the drum. Now she’d seen his face - his soft, kind face - she felt like such a witch for scolding him. But she was also somehow so much angrier. Jacob pleased everyone, while she was infamously displeasing - obstinate, hot-headed, crass. They had been friends for as long as the whole village could remember, yet no one had ever asked after a wedding. It was generally understood that sweet, young Jacob ought to settle down with someone more deserving of his charms. A freezing gust of air lashed her insides. She choked and hastened on.

“Cassie!” his urgent voice skimmed over the cool air. She could hear his uneven gait ruffling the sand, as he hurried to keep up. “I swear, nothing!”

Cassandra halted at the mouth of a cave in the tin grey cliff face, the shadow spilling around them. She rounded on Jacob, flinching at his flinch. “Four turns of nothing!” she spat.

Jacob stared at her. His eyes were a little large for his face, round pools of moonlit mint green that pulled up a little at the corners in a constant, half-hidden, mischievous smile. His lips were slightly parted, catching his breath, softening his mouth. He was barely dressed. His boots were lightened two shades by streaks of sand, his cravat and waistcoat had been abandoned, his shirt collar lay open over his lean chest. His coat hung loosely on his shoulders. His frown was somewhere between confused and wounded, his gentle brow shadowed by his thicket of black hair. He looked pulled fresh out of a story book, ready to pour her fairy wine or challenge her to a life-changing game of cards. 

“Four turns?” he asked.

Cassandra ground her teeth and tore her eyes from his infuriating, innocent prettiness. “You danced with her four times. In a row.”

Jacob scoffed. “It's a small gathering, Cassie, and two of the women I know are the musicians.”

Cassandra’s temple ticked. “So you aren't making a huge exhibition of flirting with her?”

Jacob’s hands slid into his pockets and his shoulders bowed a little. He looked at her with what she could have sworn was guilt. “Not… Not a huge exhibition…”

“Then what?”

Jacob wrinkled his nose, like an otter, and rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe a very small, travelling circus sort of sized…”

Cassandra swiped the air. “Oh, it's a circus, no doubt about that.”

Jacob’s meek face flickered, his brows lowered and shadowed his eerie, pale eyes. “Why are you so bothered anyway?” It was surly, but it was curious.

Cassandra froze. The sea rolled. Its whoosh filled the foot of space between them, made it yawn cavernous. Cassandra had been charging along her anger thoughtlessly, it hadn’t occurred to her she might have to explain it. No longer veiled by the fire, Jacob looked smaller, somehow more ethereal in the moonlight, more strange, but less wicked. She began to feel like the silly girls in the tales she’d always hated, who walked into the waves the minute some lord on horseback didn’t return a smile. 

She cleared her throat and raised her chin haughtily. “Charlotte is a nice girl and she doesn't deserve to be led on a wild goose chase for your affection.”

The corner of Jacob’s mouth twitched, starlight glittered in his wide pupils. “Who says it's a wild goose chase?”

The back of Cassandra’s neck prickled hot. 

Jacob slouched into his pockets a little and looked at her under his hair. “I could be a perfectly well domesticated goose.”

Laughter gurgled instinctively in Cassandra’s belly. She swallowed it back, thanking the darkness for hiding her blush. She hated how easily he made her laugh. She didn’t feel like making light of anything. 

“You aren’t a goose,” she said through her teeth, “You’re a magpie, hopping about whatever catches the light.”

Jacob’s lower lip jutted out, his eyes slitted. His voice came like a low flute and whispered up her back. “Listen here, you fickle thing. I proposed to you and you rejected me, if you recall.”

Cassandra’s anger spiked. “When we were 12!”

“So?” his voice rose too. His jaw and his cheekbones stood out in the glimmer, sharpening him like etched limestone. “I meant it.”

Cassandra’s stomach somersaulted. Fury stamped on the sudden nervousness. She levelled a daggering glare into his deep, liquid eyes. He held her gaze, but he softened again. It cooled her. This had always been the pattern of their friendship, her howling about like a hurricane, him absorbing it quietly and flowing at its pace, until it calmed. The October night ran clammy hands up her arms, turning the hairs on her skin crisp and making her shiver.

Jacob took a steady breath and looked into her carefully. “Cassie, are you angry because I danced with Charlotte and not with you?”

Cassandra felt naked. Her cheeks surged boiling, the rest of her iced. She folded her arms and looked away. 

Jacob was a hair shorter than her. He used it to his advantage, ducking round to make her meet his impossible eyes. His next question came in a disarmingly soothing tone. “Are you fire angry or sea angry?”

Cassandra frowned. “Pardon?”

He silently slid his foot through the sand and closed the distance between them. The rhythmic rolling of the sea hushed. Her eyes wandered to the freckle on his collarbone. 

Jacob’s voice drew around her like a shawl. “Fire angry is when you're all ferocity and brightness. All there is to do is let you burn and watch in wonder. Sea angry is when it's deep and sad. It drowns me.” 

Cassandra ached. She pulled her eyes back up to his. She could just lightly feel the warmth of his body. Her arms unfolded unbidden, her shivers dissolving at his closeness. “Do you love Charlotte?” She hated herself for asking.

His mouth slipped into a tender smile that unravelled the knots in her gut. His fingertips brushed hers, then furled away. 

He answered with no guile and no mockery. “No.”

She exhaled through her nose. Her shoulders dropped. 

Jacob’s fingers extended again, and this time they lingered on hers, tip to tip, lighter than mayflies meeting. “You don’t catch the light, Cassie. You are light.”

She blinked. She stared. She felt as if her body was streaming into moonbeams.

Jacob allowed levity back into his tone, his teeth showing up white in the dark. “And it might interest you to know that she asked me to dance so much with her to make Daniel Boon jealous, I didn't even think that -”

Cassandra kissed him. 

Her fists closed tight around his collar and she flung herself against his body and pressed her mouth to his. She cast away her embarrassment and envy, harnessed all the heat in her blood, and surfed on it into his arms.

Jacob was knocked back and jammed his heels into the sand to stay standing. Cassandra’s powerful rush shocked the breath from his body, left him reeling, overjoyed. He wrapped her in his arms and fell delightedly under the kiss he had been chasing since he was a boy. 

She pulled away, still gripping his shirt, and murmured. “Then it's fire angry.”

Jacob’s body pulsed. “I love fire angry." He fell into her again. 

Holding Cassandra was like dancing by the bonfire. She was never still, never satiated, in anything. It thrilled him. Her kiss was no different. Her tongue hooked his and duelled with it, her lips firm, her breath coming quick and gasping. She moved on him like kindling chafing to start a fire, tucking into the opening of his coat and singing him through his shirt. 

She stepped backwards. He stumbled with her, staying locked to her so he didn’t have to break the kiss. The light snuffed out. They tripped together into the cave and out of sight. His heart beat faster than her furious drumming. The scents of damp tar and seaweed gushed over them. But underneath it, he was lost in her fragrance, flax and beeswax, homey and warm. He began to wonder if he had ever been warm before, he felt like he was discovering the sensation.

She took control of their stumbling. She steered him, he surrendered to it instantly. She pushed him back against the cave wall, the uneven rock digging into his fine layer of muscle and sending a shudder through him. Cold licked his spine, as she crushed herself against him and roasted him. Her pelvis lined to his. His pulse kicked. His breath stopped. He pulled back and fought for breath, curling his fingers on her back to keep her close. 

How had he never kissed her until now? How had he survived?

Cassandra gazed into Jacob’s face. The cave shrouded them in shadow, but his eyes were startling in what little pearly light sneaked in. He was looking at her with boyish excitement and surprise and a deeper, mature sweetness, almost melancholic in its longing. He smelled overpoweringly of wood smoke. It made her hungry. His fingers moved slowly on her back, teasing just above her rump, sending enticing ribbons up her spine. His hardness nudged her through her skirts. It was summoning. She rocked her hips without thinking. A quiet sound leaked from his throat, the ale bubbles sprang up in his eyes. Something whispered in the back of her mind to be wary of sin, that the song of sirens drowned sailors. But this was Jake. Her Jake. Hadn’t he always been hers, in some small, undeniable, insurmountable way?

“I know it isn't sensible,” she heard herself say, her voice ringing delicately on the rock, “Or probably even fair, but…” She splayed her hands on his chest, starlight glancing on the weals and callouses from her work. She leaned deeper into him, pinning him to the rock wall, like a sea eagle pinning a gull with its talons. “I can't shake a feeling that you belong to me.”

His chest rose and his arms curled around her. He dipped forward and sucked a kiss from her open mouth. He tasted of beer, heady and comforting.

“I do,” he whispered against her lips, stopping her heart, intensifying her ache, “We've always belonged to each other, Cassie.”

His hand stroked over her waist, as he slipped it from her and into his pocket. He fished something out and unfurled his palm beside them. Cassandra looked down at a small shell, a thread of light spiralling on it like a spindle. Her eyebrows floated up. His heart thrummed under her fingers. She recognised the shell, she was sure, even in the dark. Her mind whisked back thirteen years to the mouth of this very cave.

_ Cassie picked her way along the beach, turning her pinny into a hammock for shells and pebbles and other treasures. She reached the yawning opening in the towering cliff without realising how far she’d wandered. Mama would be cross. She turned to hurry back, when she heard a sputtering echo from the shadows. She tip-toed forward. Just out of the light, knees drawn up to his forehead and shoulders quivering, was a boy with messy, black hair. His face was buried in his crossed arms on his knobbly knees. He was crying. Cassie dropped her horde by a rockpool, but put the best treasure in her pocket. She scurried over to the lad. _

_ “I know you,” she said brashly, “You’re Mister Smith’s new ward.” _

_ The boy’s face shot up. He looked alarmed, his face glowing with a pink blush. His eyes were enormous, even larger when filled with tears, and the same colour as the sea outside.  _

_ “Crikey!” Cassie exclaimed, “You look like the merrow in a picture in my house!” _

_ The boy cocked his head, like a pigeon. _

_ “They’re very beautiful,” Cassandra went on, then felt all warm and silly. She hastily ferreted in her pinny for the shell and held it out to him. “Here,” she said quickly. _

_ The boy sniffed, rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand, and hesitantly took the shell. He held it like precious glass and stared. Cassie stared at him.  _

_ “Thank you,” he said in a small voice. Then he glanced up and shrank into his arms. “Please, don't look at me. Boys aren't meant to cry." _

_ Cassie snorted. “What nonsense. You cry all you like.” She plonked herself next to him and fixed him with a goggling gaze. “I'll stay here ‘til you feel better and I'll look at you the whole time so you know you don't have nothing to be ashamed of." _

_ The boy looked confused. Then he smiled so brightly he outshone the sea.  _

“What's this still doing in your pocket?” Cassandra asked softly.

Jacob’s mouth twitched shyly. He shrugged and popped the shell back into its safe place. His arm looped back around her. He kissed the corner of her mouth, then answered pensively, looking down. “I think it reminds me I have someone who likes me at my lowest.” He puffed out through his nose. “I'm the town jester…”

“Village idiot.”

He tickled her, releasing the laugh she’d reined back before.

He grinned puckishly, then sobered and leaned on his tongue to keep speaking. “I am a fool and a tumbler to everyone here, smiling through the long winters, telling stories in the dark.” He faltered, his fingers stirred anxiously on her back. He huffed and spoke faster. “Sometimes I'm afraid that if I stop smiling… Stop dancing…” He trailed off and looked at her with the same hesitant shame she remembered from their first meeting. The emotion he so rarely showed, only really to her.

Something heavy thunked into place in Cassandra’s mind. She melted into the realisation. She stroked her hands up to cup his face, running her thumbs over his delicate cheeks. “That people won't want to look at you anymore,” she finished for him.

Jacob’s mouth slid into a flat line. “Orphans are untethered by nature. We’re the first to drift from the mooring when a storm hits.”

His words coated Cassandra like rust. Fire anger turned to sea anger. Not with him, but for him. Petty jealousy shrivelled, she cursed herself for it. Jacob pleased everyone. Of course, how had she never seen it? He was a merrow indeed, and merrows kept souls in cages. But in the story, the sea fairy wasn’t cruel to the fisherman, he was a host, a helper, a friend. Jacob spent his life caging souls, so that he might have company when the sea rose around him. She clasped him between her hands and locked him to her with her gaze. She’d known since she first came upon him steps away from this spot, she would never let this precious creature drift from her.

“But you…” Jacob’s wavering voice broke into her thoughts. “You still like me when I'm low.” He swallowed, tucking his chin into her hands. “Right?”

Cassandra warmed. He was looking at her with such hope, such vulnerability. She felt herself grow. She wanted to shield him, envelop him, enclose him like a pearl. Resolve and heat pooled in her abdomen, as an idea kernelled in her mind. 

She ran her hands to his shoulders. “I still like you when you're sad,” she corrected him, a smile flickering over her lips, “I like you  _ better  _ when you're low.”

She pressed on his shoulders. Her belly bubbled, as he sank without resistance, holding her eye and dropping to his knees in a pillow of sand. A cord of lightning conjoined their eyes.

“I'm sorry for not asking you to dance,” he said.

“Did you want to?”

His eyes glittered, even in the wash of darkness between her towering body and the wall. He nuzzled her skirts. Her heart skipped. 

“So much.” His fluting voice dropped low, husking. “Watching you through the bonfire, I couldn't see where the flames ended and you began.”

She sucked on her lip, something coiling tight at her core. She combed her fingers into his hair, dry from the salt air and knotted. “Say you belong to me again.”

Jacob opened his mouth on her dress, the fabric ruffling between his teeth. His voice muffled and threaded with a half-moan. “I belong to you, Cassie.”

Heat broke out on her neck. Her heart kicked up into a tarantella. She stifled a shake, as she pulled from him. He looked bereft. Then he caught the spark in her eye. His gaze turned keen. 

“Spread your coat out.” The command in her voice excited her. Even more so, the haste with which he obeyed. He wrestled his coat off speedily and threw it across the sand. He flashed her a wolf cub look, still on his knees. His shirt fell loose over his body, pale as seafoam, barely touching his skin, leaving easy openings for her that made her fingertips tingle. His britches hugged his thighs and a subtle peek showed a tantalising thickness in his crotch. She bit her lip and pushed herself away from him. 

This cave was used by the fisher folk to store a few old boats and extra odds and ends, ready to re-employ if any were wrecked. Much of her family’s work was in here. She went to the jumble at the back of the shallow cave and rooted around in a chipped rowboat. She soon found a good coil of rope. She picked it up and hefted it in her hands, drawing her fingers along the weave. Fine craftsmanship. Strong. Tough. Supple. She looped it over her shoulder. Her abdomen fluttered. She kicked off her shoes, tucked her hands under her skirts and slipped off her stockings. The cold air sneaked over her bare, tingling flesh. She gasped at a sudden bolt of desire. She steadied herself and came back to Jacob, sat cross-legged on the coat, like a pixie on a toadstool. She saw him glimpse her bare feet, his mouth going slack and his cheeks glimmering. 

She paced around him, his face turning with her. She came to his back and knelt. She ducked her mouth to his ear, grinning when he dropped his head back and shuddered at her whisper. “Take off your shirt.”

Again, he hurried to obey. Again, it thrilled her. He scrabbled to pull the shirt over his head and cast it aside. Her breath caught. His back was narrow, but watercolour shadow slipped into the furrows of muscle and painted him like a frieze. His biceps mounded subtly and his shoulders were round and soft. Goosebumps prickled across his flesh, his spine slinking under his skin, as the cold touched him. Touched him like she longed to. Now she was jealous again, but it was a clean, delicious jealousy. She ran her hands down his arms, leaving a trail of warmth. He sighed and leaned back, his hair dusting her cheek. They halted for a brief moment, nervous, shaken, but utterly trusting in the night to lead them on. She took his wrists and folded them behind him. With careful, precise movements, she set his forearms like crossbars on his back, and began to wind the rope around them.

“What are you doing?” he whispered, craning his head around, his shoulder blades jutting, as he tensed.

“Tethering you,” she replied, "I will never let you be unmoored, Jake, no matter the storm."

A breath rushed through him. He closed his eyes and pressed his brow to her cheek. He held himself stiller than she’d ever seen him. 

He nodded.

She began to wind the rope around his body. She looped it over his shoulders and passed it through the crooks of his arms, slipped it under itself into bends and links, circled it around his arms, drawing them into his sides. She nibbled the tip of her tongue, watching the stern grooves carve into his muscle, accentuating the strength often kept secret by his slenderness. She followed the pathways of his body, framing freckles, nestling into dimples, segmenting him into a gaming board for enjoyment. 

As she worked with her dexterous hands, she felt herself fall into the familiar motions of the rope maker. It gave her confidence, it grounded her. She had never done this to a man, never even imagined it, not in seriousness, at least. But somehow, she understood. The rope spoke to her, like herbs speak to cunning women, like winds speak to navigators. And so did his body. She tracked how he moved, as she worked. How he settled into the cradle when she pulled it tight, how he shivered when she dragged the rough flax over his skin. Sometimes he flinched and she adjusted until he relaxed. Sometimes she struck a flame on him and he gasped and writhed, the rope tugging in her grip. She extinguished his struggles with deep kisses on his neck, flying on the flavour of his skin, salt and smoke. He always opened for her, stretching his neck, thin whimpers escaping him and tickling her between her legs. 

She tied off the harness around his torso. She grazed his pulse with her teeth and sucked. He hummed and flexed his shoulders. The rope creaked. The sea rolled and echoed in the cave, like the echo of a dream calling someone about to wake.

Cassandra slid to Jacob’s front. She beamed on seeing his face, his eyes hooded, his mouth puckered, his hair tousled on his smooth brow, his Adam’s apple bobbing, as he gulped the air in to stay solid. His gaze floated to her and his brow creased helplessly. Her hips rocked instinctively. She tapped his boot. He complied without needing clarification, straightening his legs. She slid to straddle him, drawing up her skirts to pool around his waist and slotting herself against his cool, quivering body. She rubbed his neck and shoulders and let her eyes rove leisurely around her handiwork. In the silvery dimness, the rope looked like lines of gunpowder drizzled over him, a trail to set alight. It criss-crossed around him, netting him, subtly teasing him, as he shifted underneath it and reshaped to its clasp. The spiralling weave lined the base of his nipples. Her eyes focused on the ruddy points, hardened by cold and want, pricking sharper, as the rope kissed them. Goosebumps made his skin look so wonderfully tender. She ran her fingertip lighter than a feather down his chest. His breath ripped out him and he shuddered between her thighs, his eyes closing reverently. She had never seen him like this. She soared. She felt immortal.

“Why does this feel so good?” he whispered hoarsely.

She grinned and kissed his cheek, his blush hot against her lips. “How so?”

“It’s… It’s like you’re touching me, but more. Holding me, but more.”

“There now, I’ve caught myself a merrow.”

He chuckled, his chest bouncing, so the rope scuffed his nipples. “What do you want with a merrow?”

Jacob heard the question leave him, the need for her answer struck him deep. As she’d wrapped him, he’d felt himself trickling into the rope, his flesh forging to it, to her. It made him giddy, it entranced him. The rope snaked on him, both quelling and stirring his restlessness. It ground on him and kindled his skin. His nipples sang with sensation. His cock pushed insistently against his close-fitting britches and ached. The weight of her on him drove him mad. His senses flung between the paradise of safety, enclosed in the knotwork and the embrace of her thighs, and the pandemonium of lust that entrapment whipped up in his blood. He couldn’t touch her, so all his mind could do was scream petulantly about every swell and sliver of her body that he longed to hold, to knead, to caress, to bring to life. And he couldn’t struggle against her. Cassandra was a storm, a warrior, an adventurer. Being bound beneath her felt exquisitely dangerous, like running with a herd of wild horses. Here, veiled by moonlight and the noise of the sea, in an oasis of warmth in the cold October night, she could do anything to him. And that was all he wanted. It was all he had ever wanted.

Her hands massaged his neck. His throat caught. She could choke him and it would elate him. Being touched by her, held by her, gazed at by her intimately - the joy of it stopped time. 

She brushed her lips on his, drawing his desire to the surface. She whispered to him, like telling a secret. “Let all those souls go, Jake. Come and live on land with me.”

Her words rested on his exposed flesh, like moths on wood. He dwelled on them. She was scooping him up and holding him secure, letting him be himself, cutting loose the cares and chaos he hauled behind him. Gratitude and relief flooded him. They stung his eyes. They constricted his chest, tighter than the rope. He collapsed forward and buried his face in her neck and heaved in a deep breath of her familiar, comforting scent. A dry sob tumbled over his exhale. She clasped him in her arms, strumming the rope, reminding him that he was held, promising to always hold him. He kissed her neck softly. The taste of her skin reawakened his lust. He opened his mouth and slithered his tongue over her throat. Jacob pleased everyone. But pleasing and pleasuring were different. Cassandra made him raw and reckless. She lay in the domain of pleasure.

Cassandra’s core coiled and welled, as Jacob lapped over her jugular and ran silken lips on her evermore sensitive skin. He ran his mouth up to her ear and nipped it. She bucked against his hardness. He murmured musically to her and it filled her with flame. 

“If I'm a sprite, then tell me what you wish.”

She sighed. She stroked his arms. “Aren’t you tired of granting wishes?”

“Not yours.” He padded his lips down her neck, a new flutter going through her veins with each light kiss. “Never yours.”

She wilted into him. She pushed him from her neck and sealed their mouths together. His tongue writhed with hers. She ached in her vulva. A hundred points of pleasure burst to life on her body, each one crying out for him. She kept kissing him fiercely, as she wrestled the lacing of her dress open and wrenched down the cups of her chemise. Biting cool washed over her bared breasts. She lost the definition between ice and fire. All of it stimulated her, all of it crazed her. He was just like the rope she made, shaping to her touch, letting her weave him into something strong and ready for use. His mouth was hungry, his tongue was wily. The thought of it on her body almost tore her apart. 

She drove her hands into his hair and broke their kiss. He groaned, then groaned deeper, as he saw her breasts rise into the trickle of moonlight, her nipples pert and full. 

“Kiss my tits,” Cassandra hissed.

Jacob swore, but the word was lost, as he collapsed to her breasts. He lavished kisses on them, sucking in a spiral that drew closer and closer to her nipple. She burned hotter and hotter, as his mouth closed in, her heart cantering and her nails scratching his scalp to spur him on. He took her nipple into his mouth and lashed it with his tongue, flicking and swirling and shooting pleasure through her flesh, as she wriggled and mewled. 

“Yes… Oh, Jake…”

“Damn, Cassie…” 

He murmured unintelligibly into her quivering flesh, briefly burying his face in her softness, then coming up flushed and diving to tease her other nipple with his teeth. Pain and pleasure and want raced through her. She felt him swell, bumping her clit, drumming her with need. The sea rose to a rushing roar. It coursed through her body. She began to rock in its rhythm, surging forward on his mound with its advance, slipping back with its retreat. Jacob’s moans rose and fell with her. They hummed on her flesh, as he attacked her breasts with new passion, his tongue dancing like the bonfire. 

“Jake, your mouth…”

He nipped the underside of her breast. She jumped and landed on his cock. They both yapped at the impact shocking up them.

“What about my mouth?” he panted.

“Oh Devil, I want it everywhere.” 

“Tell me.”

The sea surged. Need surged. A cry of drunken celebration gusted to them on a breeze. Cassandra was suddenly violently aware of how close they were to the party. It exhilarated her. 

“Kiss my neck.”

He flew to her neck and gnawed on it.

“My cheek.”

He peppered her face with kisses.

“My hand.”

His lips caressed her hand, he licked her palm, he sucked each of her fingertips, circled his tongue over the thrumming pulse on the inside of her wrist. She watched his eyes flutter open and closed, sometimes worshipfully shut, sometimes wide, drinking her in.

“My tits.”

He moaned. He dined on her breasts.

“My shoulder.” She tugged her dress further down her arms. 

His lips skated along her shoulder, then pressed deep. The ache almost drowned her.

“Bite me.”

He sank his teeth into her muscle. Her spine spasmed and arched. She clutched his hair. He hissed. He bit her neck. She squealed and gripped the ropes for balance, chafing his skin and earning another tuneful groan.

She directed him around her body, like a captain ushering his crew around the deck. He moved like a puppet. Every part of her she put to his mouth he received and doted on with lustre. Every word she whispered he heeded instantly. He writhed beneath her, hurrying around her flesh, the ropes snaking on him and his cock tenting his britches and hounding after her cunt, pounding and wet under her dress. Each new sensation bled into the last, coating her in layer upon layer of sweet, maddening tingling. Her hands felt empty. She dashed them eagerly to his britches and fought with the fastenings. His cock sprung free, flooding her with excitement. It was thick and dark with blood, hard as a rudder and pointing like a pistol. She shuddered. He looked at her hotly, waves tossing in his lagoon eyes. 

“Does this belong to me too?” she teased.

His hips twisted and his teeth ground. “Fuck, Cassie, everything of me belongs to you. But especially this. Damn, I want you so much, I can’t think.”

In the shadow between their bodies, she glimpsed a slick on the tip of his cock, shining. She palmed it. He cried out and threw his head back. She laughed and wrapped her fingers around him with the other hand. She began to work him firmly, her hand tightening and loosening and twisting, as it stroked, her other palm massaging the tip. He slinked and rocked, so she felt like she was riding a rowboat, her sighs and giggles coming on the current of his moans and movement. She coated his shaft in his slick, stroking with more fluidity, smooth and slow and speedy by turns. 

“Christ, Cassie, please…” he whimpered to the sky.

“Do you like this?” she chuckled.

He nodded vigorously, his smile escaping and dazzling her in the darkness. “But I won’t last. I need you to stop.”

Cassandra pouted at him, but relented. They kissed fiercely, his mouth growing sloppy and his tongue scooping hers desperately. The eagerness of it made the air sizzle around her. Her clit and her core beat with desire.

“Jake,” she moaned, “You’re so hungry.”

“I’m fucking starving,” he smiled and dropped and sucked her breast raw.

She arched her spine to push deeper into his mouth. The way his tongue sawed and slithered on her nipple made her burn for it elsewhere. She wrenched herself from him, both of them sighing at their separation. She scrambled off his lap, sat back, and took him in. He was blindingly beautiful, rousingly randy, trussed, and flushed from her kisses and the graze of the rope, his cock like a red tulip covered in dew. His tongue moved in his mouth hypnotically. 

She leaned back on one hand. Her heart sped from a canter to a gallop. She spread her legs. She gathered her skirts in her fist and drew them up. As the heavy curtain lifted on her vulva, Jacob’s expression turned into a magic lantern show. He struggled in his bonds, he bit his lip, he glared so hot it boiled her blood. He softened, he turned dreamy. He shifted onto his knees. His torso dropped towards her, like his tongue had turned to lead, weighting the rest of his body and pulling it down. 

Cassandra clenched her skirts in her hand and drove her fingernails into the fabric of his coat under her. Her clit felt almost pierced, the cold air on her heat whisking her sensitivity wild. Her lips parted and spoke a command that sent tremors through them both. “Eat.”

Jacob fell like a sack of stones. He plunged forward and dove like a pike to her vulva.

The moment his mouth first touched her seemed to last for hours, washing her in waves of unmatched pleasure. The softness of his lips was overwhelmingly sweet. Then his tongue wormed through her folds and she was undone.

She cried out, the sound ricocheting off the stone and pinging into the depths of the cliff. She gripped the coat under her with one hand, with the other she grasped his hair and pulled him in. His moan reverberated through her. His tongue answered her urgency with zeal. He lapped and licked and swirled and ploughed, exploring her every swell and crevice, covering her with the thoroughness with which she'd bound him. She moaned and gasped and drove her hips in a coursing rhythm, fucking his mouth harder, pulling herself in by his hair. Her thighs spread wider, her hips tilting up. He licked her seam. She writhed and laughed, frenzied giggles and panting skipping out of her. Her nipples stung. Her belly became a furnace. He poured his adoration over her, like he was layering icing on a currant cake. She gazed down his back, bent over on his knees, as if at prayer. His shoulder blades flexed, his spine undulated, warping the rope and worrying his pale skin with the cherry stains of the biting weave. His wrists fidgeted, his hands clawing at his bonds. He drenched her vulva, churned the tender flesh like butter. His slurping and moaning mingled with the sounds of the sea, while the spice of sex leaked into the clean, heady, salt air.

The pleasure rose and rose, gushing over her, swelling inside her, until she thought she might burst. Her legs shook, her skin sparked, her heart danced. His tongue flowed over her like jets of undertow, carrying her away. She rushed to the brink. His eyes and his kiss and his cock flashed behind her eyes.

“I need to fuck you.” The words fired out of her like a cannon. 

She saw his back go jagged with tension. His mouth stilled. He kissed her clit deeply once more, pulling a long moan from her. He slowly raised back onto his knees. His eyes were glassy and bright, his hair was a tangle, his mouth hung open, his lips glossy and puckered and flushed. His chest bellowed for breath. Her cunt clenched, as if clasping him inside her already. She wanted to ride him. He was such a stunning prize.

“I need to fuck you,” she repeated, lower and more commanding.

He nodded, his pupils blown, his shoulders trembling. The shadows from his restless body and split britches welled around his cock, drawing her eye to the dark, straining tip. She rolled forward and mounted his lap, the scent of his sweat and her own arousal hitting her and making her high. She worked his cock a little, as she guided him to her seam. He shivered and hissed, as she massaged herself open with his head. A fierce ache gripped her abdomen. 

She sank onto his cock. 

Ruinous pleasure.

The pair howled to the moon and pressed together, flesh to flesh, gasping into each other’s necks and shaking apart at the incredible relief of this deepest, purest sin, after too many virtuous years. They braided together like tendrils of rope in Cassandra’s hands. Her thighs clamped him, her core held him. They melted into a slow, devoted kiss. 

They were still kissing, as they began to move. Carefully at first, finding a rhythm. The sea rolled in and out. They rose and fell. The sea rolled. They rose. The sea swished. They fell. 

Jacob’s cock drove deep. His hips twisted, stirring the pleasure inside her and pushing out in tumbling waves through her body. She hugged his shoulders, dropped her head back, and let her eyes blur. She rolled into the sensation with another echoing roll of the sea.

“Jake…”

Jacob was softly kissing her breasts and collar, his defined body creasing and hardening and smoothing and softening under the rope, as he moved with all of himself to pleasure her. 

“Yes?” he murmured thickly.

“Say it again.”

“Say what, Love?”

“Say you belong to me.”

He smiled on her skin. “Why do you want me to say that so much?”

Cassandra prickled, but barely felt it in the symphony of sensation erupting and growling inside her. She curled her fingers and dug her nails into his muscle, chuckling darkly. “Because women like to own beautiful things.”

Roll. Rise. Swish. Sink.

Jacob hummed. “You should own beautiful things.”

“Oh?”

“You should own everything. You wild, regal creature. You should command the world.”

He dragged his lips over her throat. He nipped her chin. They kissed and moaned into each other’s mouths. Sweat laced the insides of her thighs. Her nipples flicked over the rope and tingled, as she ground against his torso. Was the tide getting faster? She couldn’t hear where their sighing and the scuffing of their flesh ended and the sloughing of the sea began. Everything wove into one continuous cord of bliss.

“Take everything of me.” Jacob murmured against her lips, plucking kisses from her after every word. “Oh, Cassie, cage my soul.”

She almost sobbed. She crushed her mouth to his and let the cave spin around her, the pulses of lust in her clit turning savage. She felt like a wave crashing over a ship, thrusting and eroding his body, as she moved on him. She felt terrifyingly powerful, primal. She bucked harder and gripped him and began to ride him rough. 

He cried out hoarsely. “Damn, yes! Ah! I’m yours! I’m utterly yours, just rip your pleasure from me, make me nothing but your lover.”

She moaned hotly, his words wrapping her and holding her close. He twisted in his bonds, his brow buckling. 

“Harder,” he hissed, “Goddess, wreck me.”

She snarled. The aggression of her night’s anger stampeded into her muscles. She gripped his shoulders and flung herself into furious fucking. It was like she was taking vengeance on her pleasure, like she was wielding him as a weapon. They thrust and crashed and rocked, their caressing moans rising to cries and shouts and growls. The sea surged forward, swallowing the shore, roaring in the cave. It rose to a din. Their ecstasy and passion warring with the elements. 

Cassandra’s lust consumed her. She lost all sense of everything, except the clamour in her body and the fascinating bound beauty of the man beneath her. She gazed at him, gorged on him. She moved on his cock vampirically, gluttonous for the pleasure he pumped into her and lavished on her flesh. The heat grew until she could barely breathe, fire in a fracturing glass. She felt fissures erupt across her body, pressure and promise building to the unbearable.

“Oh! Jake! Oh, my darling!”

“Fuck me, claim me. God, I’m on fire!”

The sea gave a final ear-splitting roar and shattered against the rocks. 

“YES!”

They shattered too. Pleasure rent them. They spasmed and shook and screamed. Their souls rushed free. Jacob dove into the shelter of Cassandra's body and fell apart with a jet of tumbling moans. Cassandra clung to him like a lifeline. She grounded the last sentient scrap of her in him, as wildfires and ocean storms devoured her body and mind. 

They dropped from the chaos of climax into a shuddering, misty silence. 

Cassandra reached around Jacob with heavy arms and loosed his bonds. She helped him ease out of them and traced her fingers around the net of red marks with a satisfied smile. Jacob’s eyes were lidded and he swayed heavily. He gulped the cool air in and cuddled her waist and nestled into her warmth against the encroaching cold of the cave. Happy bubbles popped in Cassandra’s stomach. She folded him into her arms protectively, running her hands soothingly around his marred back, feeling him relax into her, his chest pressing to hers with his heaving breath. 

After a long, peaceful moment, he peeled from her, eyes still closed, and pressed his lips softly to hers. She returned his kiss with a smile. She felt him smiling too. He sighed onto her cheek and dropped his head back. For another long moment, she watched him inhale and exhale in a slow, recovering rhythm, hanging limp in her arms.

His enchanting eyes suddenly snapped open and stared at her with heart-breaking tenderness. His hands furled around her waist.

“Cassie,” he murmured, “I still mean it. From when we were 12.”

Cassandra froze. She cupped his face, her eyes boring into his, as she searched his sincerity. 

“Are you asking me to marry you?” She said it so quietly it barely rose above the sea.

Jacob plucked a kiss from her parted lips. And nodded. “I have been, in one form or another, asking you to marry me, asking you to own me, every day since we first met.”

Cassandra’s heart pooled in her chest. Then she flooded with joy. Tears leaped to her eyes. She threw her arms around his neck and he caught her up in a fierce embrace. Whether his body trembled against her with tears or laughter, she couldn’t say.

“Is that a yes?” he whispered.

“Yes,” she sobbed.

He laughed heartily. It buoyed her, spun her. He hugged her tight, rushing her with warmth. He eased her back and beamed into her face, like dawn breaking over the waves. “In that case, I have one more question.”

She laughed and sniffed and rubbed her eyes. She cupped his face again, catching the tears trickling down his cheeks with strokes of her thumbs. “Ask me.”

He kissed her once more. As the sea lulled, a strain of merry music came skipping into the cave from down the beach. 

“Cassandra.” He whispered her name like an oath. He smiled and sucked one more gentle, doting kiss from her lips. “Will you dance with me?”


End file.
